WAYSIDE NOTES.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 423, 2 June 1904, Page 5

WAYSIDE NOTES.

[Bt m Seakchught."]

The Hon. Premier hag, in his lengthy career, played many parts, and in his place of pcwer and influence, displays a fatherly interest m every unit of the nation. As an employer of labour, he is the first among his peers, and there oan be no other first, for has he not the biggest purse into which to dip for his employees. It is also a noted fact that these same employees swear by him, and, as your « Special Reporter' points out, they make no secret of for whom they work. They know that the pay is good and sure—the paymaster being ever ready with the dollars on pay day. These same employees feel assured that the one principle of our employer for the State is for the good of the whole and for them little wealth and little care. A common dead level for all, a sapping the springs of ambition, a deadening of the highest aspirations of man, a doing away with all competitions and bargaining, are but a few of the results that would follow from making the State ♦he all-embarrasing employer in the country. The Premier goes not so far in his ideals which are to equalise the contribution of wealth.

Not only is the Hon. Premier not satisfied with being the greatest employer of labour; but he now comes out in a new role—that of the most advanced socialist of the age. He would establish nursing homes in large centres. This is commendable, and evidences the tenderness of his heart as well as the broadness of his views as the first citizen of the land. He would ameliorate the condition of those poor women, who are left to battle with a young family against the coldness and uncbaritableness of the world, and in so doing he would conserve for the benefit of the State's valuable lives, which would sink into nothingness, or grow up to augment the undesirable class. At the same time, in a young fturdy country as New Zealand surely ji, State nursing homes might have a tendency to loosen home-ties and home, affections, and give rise to parental indifference. Such a state of mind in domestic life should not be encouraged, but-rather repressed and every means devised that would educate to a sturdy independence. No doubt such homes could be utilised in saving for the State the neglected lees of the large-centres of population.

lam charmed to know that " Fosiicker" of the Dunstan Times has a commanding view from his own midden, but, as my midden commands as fine a prospect, he and I cannot be expected to see eye to eye. The charms of his little village are enhanced from

bis nearness of view; but that is no " reason why he should crow over bis neighbour, which is vulgar. 'Fossicker' claims to be an unoffending neighbour, at least this is how he qualifies his little Debating Club ; bat in no sense does he show that the club did not offend against the unwritten laws that #ule good taste. It has been assumed in the part, that the county town, until it degenerates into a village, ieads in matters of county manners and cus* toms. Consequently, when that town sets a bad example, Alexandra must decline to follow it.

It is the unexpected that happens in war. Here are the little Japanese outwitting a great western nation in the art of war, and not only outmanauvring them, but outclassing them in the fighting line. They play the game with such extraordinary mathematical precision that their great enemy is astounded. Their movements in advance appear to fit in with remarkable exactitude, every unit moving as part of one harmonious whole. From a barbaric, exclusive nation, the Japanese have advanced to tbe van, within the last three decades amoog eastern nations; and now their continued success against one of tbe greatest Western powers, presages for them a great future among nations bordering the Pacific. It has boen asked," Isithe great historical past of the Atlantic going to be repeated in the Pacific.'' The present outlook leads one to infer that the end of the twentieth century will be in a greater blaze of glory than the end of the nineteenth, and that the action will be the Pacific where Japan will p'ay a leading part. This young nation appears to possess such energy, as charaoterisef the Anglo Saxon race in the past, and now with Western ideas grafted to native stock, they will grow in greatness, rise and fall as ether nations have done before them.